When I recently revisited my DVDs of the sister series Fear Itself, which also featured episodes by veteran horror directors, I really didn’t remember any of the stories, but going through my Masters of Horror discs was a different story. These came back to me as if I’d just seen them yesterday. So let’s get into all the episodes from both seasons.
SEASON 1
Episode 1 – Incident On And Off A Mountain Road
Director: Don Coscarelli
Stars – Angus Scrimm
While on a dark road alone at night, a woman crashes and sees a monstrous man dragging a body into the woods. He then abducts her, and she must use survival skills taught to her by her husband to escape. The monster man and his lair are just awesome in this episode.
Episode 2 – Dreams in the Witch-House
Director: Stuart Gordon
Stars – Ezra Godden (from Stuart Gordon’s Dagon)
A grad student rents an apartment to work on his thesis and is then terrorized by a witch. This is pure witchy nightmare goodness.
Episode 3 – Dance of the Dead
Director: Tobe Hooper
Stars – Robert Englund
This is a story of a dystopian, future society in which a teen girl gets involved with the wrong crowd. When she sneaks into a club where the host brings the dead back to life to dance, she makes a heinous discovery. Englund and his zombie dancers are definitely the highlight of this episode, as is the dark commentary on humanity.
Episode 4 – Jenifer
Director: Dario Argento
Stars – Steven Weber
A detective saves a horribly disfigured woman from being murdered and brings her home to care for her. Soon he is being seduced by her…and then begins to realize that despite seeming like a wounded, lost soul, she’s a vicious flesh eater. This episode is a total mind fuck, and two of the most sexual and gruesome moments were cut from the episode. You can see them in the bonus documentary on the DVD. And be warned–there’s a grisly scene involving a cat, and another with a young girl. Argento doesn’t give a fuck.
Episode 5 – Chocolate
Director: Mick Garris
Stars – Henry Thomas
A man who works for a flavor creating company tries a chocolate that opens a communication channel between him and a woman. He can see what she’s seeing and soon finds himself in an Eyes of Laura Mars situation. This leads to murder…as well as some gender-bending queer aspects!
Episode 6 – Homecoming
Director: Joe Dante
Stars – Thea Gill (of Queer as Folk)
This is an over-the-top political satire from the Bush Jr. years, when many were enraged that he sent so many young Americans to die in a war of his making. When a member of the Republican Party wishes for a dead soldier to come back from the dead, it creates a domino effect that leads to a whole bunch of zombies that want to cast their vote in the next election. It’s eerily prophetic in how it deals with the right wing stealing elections.
Episode 7 – Deer Woman
Director: John Landis
Stars – Brian Benben
A detective investigates when men are being killed on the side of the road while sexually aroused, even though the deaths look like animal attacks. In familiar Landis style, there’s a comedic tone to the story as the detective plays out various scenarios in his mind of how the men are being killed. Also, the plot details are steeped in Native American folklore.
Episode 8 – Cigarette Burns
Director: John Carpenter
Stars – Norman Reedus, Udo Kier
A movie theater owner facing hard times accepts a job finding a lost horror film believed to be cursed. During its only viewing before being destroyed, it turned viewers into crazed killers. Horror highlights of this episode include one of the stars of the film chained up and looking freaky, and a shirtless hunk in leather hacking off a woman’s head with a machete.
Episode 9 – The Fair Haired Child
Director: William Malone
Stars – Lori Petty
A young woman is abducted by a couple and locked in a basement with a young mute man. As she tries to find a way to escape, the mute man reveals to her why she’s not the first person they abducted and won’t be the last.
Episode 10 – Sick Girl
Director: Lucky McKee
Stars – Angela Bettis
A lesbian etymologist is way too cozy with her insects and can’t get close to any women as a result. When she acquires a mysterious bug from Brazil, it really creeps its way into a blossoming relationship with a new girl. This is as ooey-gooey gross as a bug story gets, and Bettis, who also starred in Lucky McKee’s May, plays her usual horror weirdo role. We get a giant bug transformation at the end, and that’s just awesome.
Episode 11 – Pick Me Up
Director: Larry Cohen
Stars – Fairuza Balk, Michael Moriarty
When a bus breaks down on a deserted road, the passengers soon discover there are two different psycho killers on the loose. This is a fresh take on the old country road trip horror subgenre, and it’s worth it for the zany final act.
Episode 12 – Haeckel’s Tale
Director: John McNaughton
This tale tells of a godless medical student in the 1800s who wants to resurrect the dead. There’s a scene of a man bringing a dog back to life only to kill it immediately because it returned Pet Sematary style. As much as I’m not a fan of period pieces, the final act is deliciously macabre and sexual.
Episode 13 – Imprint
Director: Takashi Miike
Stars – Billy Drago
If M. Butterfly were torture porn, this would be it. An American who left the prostitute he loved in Japan years before comes back looking for her and learns of her horrific treatment once he was gone. The torture is heinous, and there are also disturbing birthing, abortion, and fetal scenes, plus extreme violence towards women.
SEASON 2
Episode 1 – The Damned Thing
Director: Tobe Hooper
Stars – Sean Patrick Flanery, Ted Raimi, Brendan Fletcher
A small town sheriff believes an evil force that compelled his father to kill his mother in 1981 is trying to destroy his town. A fairly cliche tale, it does add a big creature element to a basic The Crazies concept. I also noticed several similarities to Hooper’s work on Poltergeist.
Episode 2 – Family
Director: John Landis
Stars – George Wendt
A middle-aged dude on a suburban street is actually killing people and using their bodies to create his own family. When a young straight couple moves in across the street, he decides he must add the woman to his growing family.
Episode 3 – The V Word
Director: Ernest R. Dickerson
Stars – Michael Ironside
Two friends playing the Doom video game decide to sneak into a funeral home for some scary fun. They’re horrified when they find…dead bodies. Then they encounter a vampire. And the only other thing I’ll say about this one is…how can you go wrong with Michael Ironside as a vampire terrorizing two teenagers?
Episode 4 – Sounds Like
Director: Brad Anderson
A phone service worker is grieving the death of his son and has a wife with a long term illness. He also has an exaggerate sense of hearing and can’t shut it off. As a result, sound starts driving him mad. This episode is dullsville.
Episode 5 – Pro-Life
Director: John Carpenter
Stars – Emmanuelle Vaugier, Ron Perlman
Carpenter dares to go for the abortion issue. What’s masterful about it is that the side you think this episode takes on the subject will most likely be determined by the side you take on the subject. A young woman is brought to a clinic and wants her baby removed. Her religious nut father and his goons come to get her out. There’s plenty of gore, a creature crawling out of the pregnant girl, and even a kick ass, satanic demon breaking up through the floor.
Episode 6 – Pelts
Director: Dario Argento
Stars – Meat Loaf, John Saxon
Meat Loaf plays a sleazy dude who runs a fur making sweatshop and obsessively harasses a stripper to have sex with him. When he gets his hands on some mesmerizing raccoons caught on a witchy old lady’s land, he thinks making them into a fur coat will score him the stripper. But these are no ordinary raccoons. This is one bloody episode, and features animal abuse and mutilation.
Episode 7 – The Screwfly Solution
Director: Joe Dante
Stars – Jason Priestley, Elliott Gould
This is a very major commentary on environment, religion, toxic masculinity, and the treatment of females in society. An experimental solution to a fly problem using cropdusting to interrupt the male procreation ability causes an outbreak of men violently brutalizing and killing women. This one goes off the rails at the end.
Episode 8 – Valerie On The Stairs
Director: Mick Garris
Stars – Christopher Lloyd, Tony Todd
An aspiring horror author takes a room in a boardinghouse. He’s haunted by a female ghost who asks him for help because a male entity is terrorizing her. Tony Todd is the highlight as the beastly male, and the story involves the idea of creativity manifesting into reality.
Episode 9 – Right to Die
Director: Rob Schmidt
Stars – Corbin Bernsen, Robin Sydney
A husband and wife have a car accident and she is set on fire. She ends up in a coma, and he is forced to decide whether or not to keep her on life support. In the meantime, she begins haunting him…as a very crispy ghost.
Episode 10 – We All Scream for Ice Cream
Director: Tom Holland
Stars – Lee Tergesen
As children, a group of friends played a prank on the ice cream man, which ended in tragedy. Now the ice cream man is back for vengeance. This one has a great 1980s Stephen King meets Steven Spielberg vibe to it.
Episode 11 – The Black Cat
Director: Stuart Gordon
Stars – Jeffrey Combs
Edgar Allan Poe is an alcoholic with writer’s block, and his wife’s cat hates him. When she becomes very ill, it’s a battle between him and the cat. This has disturbing animal abuse in it, so despite loving Gordon, Combs, and Poe, I found this episode hard to watch.
Episode 12 – The Washingtonians
Director: Peter Medak
Stars: Johnathon Schaech
A man, his wife, and their daughter come to the home of his deceased grandmother. He finds a note behind a painting of George Washington that claims the president was a cannibal. It turns out there’s a society that protects the President’s secret. While there’s some nice gore, this is a pretty hokey episode.
Episode 13 – Dream Cruise
Director: Norton Tsuruta
Stars – Ryo Ishibashi
This episode is notable for having a full-length feature version included on the DVD, running 87 minutes long compared to the aired 57-minute episode.
A man is still haunted by the drowning death of his brother when he was a child. Literally haunted. By the ghost of his brother. This proves to be problematic when he goes on a client’s boat for business purposes. It’s reminiscent of The Ring movies and The Grudge movies…and happens to be from the director of Ringu 0. Is there killer hair? You bet there is. On the high seas no less, making this like some nightmarish Jaws/Sadako mashup.
